MAD About Trump

by Various

MAD ABOUT TRUMP: A BRILLIANT LOOK AT OUR BRAINLESS PRESIDENT is an all-out comedy assault on the most idiotic idiot to ever reach the White House (George W. Bush and visitors included)! In these 128 pages, President Trump is mercilessly mocked, relentlessly ridiculed and savagely satirized. The book features MAD's best reprinted material with the sharpest satiric shots at "The Donald," comically chronicling his rise from obnoxious businessman to really obnoxious reality show host to uber obnoxious "Commander-in-Tweet." Please note: MAD will not offer refunds on this book when Trump is impeached!

MAD About Trump Review

April 17, 2017

Nenia *the flagrant liberal* Campbell

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestOh, Various. You are prolific, aren't you? You've written about everything from Irish folklore to books about the best jokes, the most beautiful jokes, fantastic jokes. Obviously, when I saw that this prolific author had published a book making fun of Trump, I had to have it. I blew off watching Archer to read MAD ABOUT TRUMP, that's how thrilled I was. Archer. The new one.First, a disclaimer. This is not going to be a pro-Trump review. Ima Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestOh, Various. You are prolific, aren't you? You've written about everything from Irish folklore to books about the best jokes, the most beautiful jokes, fantastic jokes. Obviously, when I saw that this prolific author had published a book making fun of Trump, I had to have it. I blew off watching Archer to read MAD ABOUT TRUMP, that's how thrilled I was. Archer. The new one.First, a disclaimer. This is not going to be a pro-Trump review. Imagine that. A woman with a Women's March picture as her Goodreads profile photo (the SF one, no less) and the tagline "flagrant liberal" in her username reading a book that's making fun of Trump not being pro-Trump. It seems intuitive, I know, but I actually had someone accusing me of having an "agenda" a few months ago, and I had to laugh at that, because agenda usually implies that you're trying to hide your sinister schemes under some other sort of pretense and Blue's Clues is more subtle than that.You know what they say. Sometimes the cigar is actually a d*ck pick.MAD ABOUT TRUMP is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some genuinely funny passages in here, and some passages like Living Dead apprentice that just made me roll my eyes and scoff. I must say that I was impressed by the range. There's everything from movie poster art to comic panels to magazine pages to fake advertisements to poems and pretty much everything in between. The humor level ranges from sophisticated to low-brow (which is typical of MAD), so in a way, that's nice, because it almost guarantees that there is something in here for everyone, no matter your tastes.Some of my favorites were the conservative Christmas carols for post-Trump election x-mas; the new presidential seal (replace the bald eagle with the bird from Twitter); a GQ mock-up featuring the cabinet picks that gets salty AF; a pretty brilliant Family Circus parody; an equally brilliant Suicide Squad Parody called "Donald Trump's Moral Slide Squad" (featuring Kellyann Conway as "Hardly Coherent"); a fake Shopkins advert called Trumpkins; and probably my personal favorite of the collection: an Undercover Boss Parody called "Undercover Boob."Also, to whomever formatted this book: at first my heart sank when I realized that it was basically just scanned pages of the comic book as it would be read in hard copy form with both pages spread - but bless you for having the text on each page stand alone on each page, instead of forcing me to flip back and forth. It was very readable in e-book format, so that's something to keep in mind, as well. Honestly, with what's been going on in the world lately, I needed this collection to make me laugh. And it did, a little. Enough to count. The beginning of the collection is a tad uneven, but it gets a lot better as you get closer to the end. (For some reason, they put a lot of the cheap laughs up front.) I was afraid it would be silly, but I actually ended up enjoying this comic book quite a bit! If you're tired AF of seeing BS on the news, and are currently between episodes of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and Late Night with Seth Meyers, pick this book up when it comes out in June.To quote Indra Devi: "Laughter drives shouting away."Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!3.5 stars

Some laughs, very typical Mad Magazine satire. The parody on the children's book "No, David!" called "No, Donald!" was priceless.

May 21, 2017

Michael Hicks

One of the things that makes satirizing Donald Trump so difficult is that no matter how low the bar for expectations are set, Trump always manages to fall short, repeatedly surprising us with how shallow, crude, and idiotic he actually is. Even when we think he cannot possibly manage to be any stupider, he proves us wrong, over and over and over.Trump is horribly flawed, to put it lightly, but usually in a predictable way. We know that if you stroke his ego, he'll promise you the greatest things One of the things that makes satirizing Donald Trump so difficult is that no matter how low the bar for expectations are set, Trump always manages to fall short, repeatedly surprising us with how shallow, crude, and idiotic he actually is. Even when we think he cannot possibly manage to be any stupider, he proves us wrong, over and over and over.Trump is horribly flawed, to put it lightly, but usually in a predictable way. We know that if you stroke his ego, he'll promise you the greatest things, the best things, things you can only ever imagine, but the best things nonetheless. Call him a small-handed pussy-grabber whose breath reeks of rot and decay, and he'll still be sending you press clippings decades later arguing that his hands are not that small. And you know he'll be dedicating many a lonely hours tweeting ALL of it from his golden toilet. Even when we think he cannot possibly be stupid enough to undermine his own staff who are attempting to cover up whatever latest treasonous BS he's committed through his own ineptitude, he still manages to surprise us by being even dumber than we gave him credit for, but we kind of know it's coming anyway. In these ways, he's completely, utterly predictable. Unfortunately, MAD Magazine's effort at making light of and mocking such shortcomings are equally predictable and tiresome.Frankly, MAD About Trump: A Brilliant Look at Our Brainless President is not nearly as mean, cruel, derisive, or scathing as Trump deserves. It also doesn't feel particularly fresh, releasing in late June, our 8,976,349th year of Trump's reign. Too much of the magazine's attempts at humor are trite acknowledgments of how Trump actually behaves, and its attempts at caricature are nowhere near as outlandish a Trump himself. When one artist draws the orange buffoon trying to sneak into a pageant contestant's dressing room, we can only sigh with the sad realization that not only is it true, but that Trump-proper was also known for ducking into an underage girl's dressing rooms, as well. It's difficult to make light of his history as a sexual assailant and voyeurism of naked or scantily-clad children. The biggest problem with this issue of MAD Magazine is that it is utterly soft serve, a little league softball attempt at mockery, but one that is too often completely on the nose. Take for instance the poster about Besty DeVos's purchased cabinet post, or selections of Trump tweets, one of which includes his thoughts on Thanksgiving: "A great day to remember how the Indians welcomed the Pilgrims to America, but NOT Muslims or Syrian refugees. Smart!" Seriously - are we sure he hasn't actually tweeted that (and if he hasn't, can you honestly promise he won't?!). Or, "If you're committing hate crimes in my name, please stop. It's Thanksgiving, for God's sake! You can always pick it back up tomorrow!" Of course, the biggest inaccuracy in any of MAD's tweets from Trump are the lack of misspellings and shoddy grammar. Where this comic should be ripping Trump and his supporters 120 thousand brand new assholes, it instead settles for the obvious and more mundane aspects of Trump's character. Where are comics about the infamous pee tape, or a poster of Trump drenched in urine, fresh off a golden shower and ripe for use in Resistance protests? Where are the checklists of who will be covered under PutinCare and who won't be? (Rich white guys in the GOP: COVERED. Women and minorities: NOT COVERED). Instead, we get several cheap and weak spoofs of The Apprentice. The MAD writers chose simply to opt for the cheap, easy, and sometimes greasy, way out. Just like Trump himself.There are a few bright spots, though, even if they are really few and far between. The crap-to-quality ratio is decidedly skewed in favor of crap, but occasionally a few gems snuck past the editors here and there. The comparisons between a Trump press conference and a bus station bathroom are on point, and I got a few chuckles out of a one-page segment on the similarities and differences between him and Pope Francis. Trump's new presidential seal, which sees the eagle replaced with the Twitter logo, is pretty clever, as is a quick visual gag of Trump's hair mussed by his KKK hood, and a one-liner about our national anthem being replaced with its Russian counterpart. In fact, the half-page bullet points devoted to the silver linings of Trump's presidency are all pretty funny, and perhaps uncomfortably close to the truth... Another segment worth exploring, particularly in light of Evangelical support for Cheeto Hitler, is Trump vs. The Bible, which pairs Bible quotes against Trumpism, such as Leviticus outlawing incest against Trump talking about banging his daughter, or Proverbs 18:15: "An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge," against Trump's "We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated." Trump's rewritten version of John Lennon's "Imagine" is also pretty remarkable, and maybe even the stand-out segment of the whole issue. I also have to give props to MAD for including a fake diploma from Trump's fake university that allows you fill in your name and frame for hanging. Friends and neighbors wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between this and the phony one! I also got a big laugh out of the similarities between Trump and Burger King's new Mac 'N Cheetos for noting that both look like an Oompa Loompa boner. That's a top-fucking-notch, spot-on observation. Scattered between all this are some movie poster spoofs that are Photoshopped pretty nicely, providing send-ups of Taxi Driver, Captain America: Civil War, and Die Hard. And even all this sounds much better than it actually is... Coming in at 132 pages, this comic is a massive failure, all things considered.While there are (literally) a couple clever gags and funny punchlines, I found most of the issue pretty humdrum, if not outright basic. I haven't read MAD Magazine in probably a good twenty-five years, but recalling my fondness for it in my youth, I figured if anybody deserved my attention for a Trump takedown, it was this particular title. Maybe I've simply outgrown MAD and its comedic stylings, or maybe Trump is too much of a real-life moronic cartoon villain to properly satirize. Just when you think you can take a comedic razor's edge to the man, he stoops ever lower still, proving that you have, once again, given him far too much credit. And that's the fundamental flaw in this issue - Trump is given far, far, far too much credit. Even when he's getting torn a new one, you know it's only a matter time before MAD's writers look like Nostradamus predicting Trump's next nation-ruining moment, even as pundits declare it to be the moment Donnie-boy really became president. There's a few biting segments worth a look, but the magazine overall is an unremarkable dud, particularly in light of far more scathing late night TV monologues from Stephen Colbert or John Oliver, or even the occasional Twitter account for that matter. Perhaps that's as it should be though. Trump is best known for his late-night twitter rants and celebrity TV shows. If he's to be taken down on any battlefield, it'll be online or on television, not in books he'll have never heard of and won't be bothered to read regardless of how many pretty pictures and illustrations may be inside. [Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]

I received this from Netgalley and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Not worth the paper (or electrons, in this case) it's printed on.

April 17, 2017

Adam Di Filippe

Not the most biting satire, but it did make me laugh throughout.

June 16, 2017

Christopher Lawson

In MAD about Trump, there is enough to offend just about everyone. Naturally, the key target is our beleagured president, but many others get the same treatment. I must say, however that Putin looks a little more "buff" than I remember from those bare-chested horseback photos.I think it's arguable whether this book is a "Brilliant Look," but it's still fun.My favorite is the Trump "Mount Rushmore," which of course features Donald Trump, on every sculpture!I suspected that Donald and KellyAnne we In MAD about Trump, there is enough to offend just about everyone. Naturally, the key target is our beleagured president, but many others get the same treatment. I must say, however that Putin looks a little more "buff" than I remember from those bare-chested horseback photos.I think it's arguable whether this book is a "Brilliant Look," but it's still fun.My favorite is the Trump "Mount Rushmore," which of course features Donald Trump, on every sculpture!I suspected that Donald and KellyAnne were good dancers, but now I know for sure!MAD About Trump is a cute book. Just look at the pictures and don't take it too seriously.

I was given the opportunity to read an electronic copy of MAD about Trump: a Brilliant Look at Our Brainless President. This is my honest opinion of the book.MAD About Trump is the perfect blend of snarky and rude, with just enough humor to keep readers guessing as to the validity of the dialogue and depictions. That is, after all, the point to MAD - the unvarnished truth mixed in with twisted facts. Jake Tapper's forward sets the stage perfectly, transporting me back to my own enthusiasm over n I was given the opportunity to read an electronic copy of MAD about Trump: a Brilliant Look at Our Brainless President. This is my honest opinion of the book.MAD About Trump is the perfect blend of snarky and rude, with just enough humor to keep readers guessing as to the validity of the dialogue and depictions. That is, after all, the point to MAD - the unvarnished truth mixed in with twisted facts. Jake Tapper's forward sets the stage perfectly, transporting me back to my own enthusiasm over new MAD magazine's arriving on store shelves.My favorite parts of MAD About Trump were the mocking movie posters, as well as the real quotes that came back to bite the creator of them. Poking fun is what MAD does best, but I actually thought that the writers were a bit restrained. They got their zingers in, yes, but they were not as harsh or brutal as they could have been. This book may be more well received by those who align themselves with one particular political party over another, but all readers should take MAD About Trump for what it is: a chance to laugh a little and to joke instead of the negative alternative.

Mad about MAD - and they do do satire and humor better than the late night shows - even though Trump-bashing stopped being funny a long time ago.

June 16, 2017

Regina Hunter

An audaciously atrocious piece. A lot of mockery visuals and charts. Comic strips galore. Bright colors, celebrities, caricatures - all can be found here. Another detail I noticed is that it is not one sided, everybody who even contests to be against Trump, is also mocked against him in the book. I think I would definitely come back to it again later on.

MAD about Trump is a rock and rolling, hits it in the ballpark, no holds barred satire about Trump and the other ninnies who ran for office in the 2016 term. MAD, as usual, found that sweet spot of targeting and mocking Trump and showing him in all his glory, I mean stupidity. There are so many favorites. Seeing Trump and his conquests, I mean other presidential candidates, modeling clothes, my favorite being Ben Carson in his purple pj's ready for a good sleep (daytime) and us wide awake. For t MAD about Trump is a rock and rolling, hits it in the ballpark, no holds barred satire about Trump and the other ninnies who ran for office in the 2016 term. MAD, as usual, found that sweet spot of targeting and mocking Trump and showing him in all his glory, I mean stupidity. There are so many favorites. Seeing Trump and his conquests, I mean other presidential candidates, modeling clothes, my favorite being Ben Carson in his purple pj's ready for a good sleep (daytime) and us wide awake. For those of us who are parents, a take-off on the book No, David showing Trump as being the acting-out infant-child that he is and a movie poster replica of Blah Blah Land with Kellyanne Conway (in the beautiful yellow dress) and Donald Trump dancing and prancing the night away. The drawings, photos, type face are the usual MAD style, bold in your face and easy to read. Buy this book to have a good laugh and keep your sanity. I can't wait for the next MAD satire about his glory days in office and impeachment.

Apparently I am not the only one who thinks our current president is an idiot. Mad Magazine has deemed to him so much of a idiot, that they immortalize him in his own book. Everything from alternative christmas carols, an Apprentice like “You’re Fired” marathon, the so called movie posters, and my favorite the Banana Republican add.. Which part will be your Trump hating favorite, you have to get the book to decide for yourself.

This is a laugh out loud book!! I could not wait to read it. I am sure some will find it offensive but it is light hearted fun!! Including some of his actual tweets was a nice touch and "The Tale of The Tape"' priceless. Lol. But my favorite was "No, Donald, No". The illustrations!!! Get this book. You will not regret it. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book in return for my honest review.

MAD lives up to its reputation for being irreverent and outrageous in MAD About Trump with parodies of movie posters, advertisements, song lyrics, fight posters, children's books and Trumpian tweets.(I received pre-publication access thanks to Edelweiss.)

The following joke is recounted by Peter Barnes in his book about Ernst Lubitsch’s classic 1942 film ‘To Be or Not To Be’:After World War II, the aged, fugitive Hitler and Goebbels have survived and are discovered in a New York restaurant when another diner recognises them and goes over. ‘Hitler? Goebbels? What’re you two doing here?’ ‘We’re only creating the Fourth Reich,’ says Goebbels. ‘It’s true, says Hitler, ‘only this time we’re going to kill ten million Jews and six postmen.’ ‘Why’re you The following joke is recounted by Peter Barnes in his book about Ernst Lubitsch’s classic 1942 film ‘To Be or Not To Be’:After World War II, the aged, fugitive Hitler and Goebbels have survived and are discovered in a New York restaurant when another diner recognises them and goes over. ‘Hitler? Goebbels? What’re you two doing here?’ ‘We’re only creating the Fourth Reich,’ says Goebbels. ‘It’s true, says Hitler, ‘only this time we’re going to kill ten million Jews and six postmen.’ ‘Why’re you going to kill six postmen?’ asks the diner. Hitler turns to Goebbels in triumph. ‘You see, nobody cares about the Jews!'Some people will find that joke eye-wateringly funny, whilst others will greet it with mirthless discomfort. Thus this joke, like the film ‘To Be or Not To Be’, which is set in Nazi-occupied Poland and features characters such as Colonel “Concentration Camp” Erhardt, raises the question whether some subjects should simply be off limits from humourous treatment – a question that is particularly apposite when considering ‘MAD About Trump’. Should a narcissistic egomaniac who has offended, amongst others, the disabled, war veterans, Muslims, Mexicans and women be received with anything other than cold contempt or is mocking and satirising such an individual not only a valid response but a healthy one, given the therapeutic nature of laughter?Even leaving aside the First Amendment I side with the latter view, although it obviously helps if the jokes are funny. Humour is horribly subjective so all I can say is that ‘MAD about Trump’ worked pretty well for me, although some of the references are likely to be lost on even the most avid Americanophile.With so many writers the quality of the material is also bound to be a little hit-or-miss. Simply reimagining a Pirates of the Caribbean-style poster with Trump as Jack Sparrow strikes me as lazy but suggesting that under Trumpcare it will become mandatory for doctors to refer to terminally ill patients as ‘losers’ is spot on, as is the Trump Thanksgiving tweet: “A great day to remember how the Indians welcomed the Pilgrims to America, but NOT Muslims or Syrian refugees. Smart!”In addition to questions of ‘taste’, the book faces two other significant problems. The first is the danger that certain references will quickly become dated. The second problem is that sometimes the bare facts about Trump simply cannot be capped comedically. Thus a two-page spread providing reasons why Trump should be fired can never hope to be more humorously inventive than the relatively unvarnished introduction to the piece which points out the paradox of ‘The Apprentice’ being hosted by a person who “consistently shows bad business judgement, makes embarrassing corporate decisions and, frankly, has one of the worst résumés in corporate history!”To sum up, this lavishly illustrated volume mostly hits the mark and is occasionally laugh out loud. Not least amongst the pleasures of reading it are imagining how the Donald himself would receive it.

A Treat From the Usual Gang of IdiotsI guess one of the perks of winning a presidential election is that you get to be skewered by humor magazines like MAD. In this volume they give Trump the expected going over. There are enough Clinton shots that it's quite clear they could have turned their guns on Hillary had the election turned out differently. This book follows the tried and true MAD method. A lot of one page poster bits, (repositioning popular movies and such as Trump features). Lots of o A Treat From the Usual Gang of IdiotsI guess one of the perks of winning a presidential election is that you get to be skewered by humor magazines like MAD. In this volume they give Trump the expected going over. There are enough Clinton shots that it's quite clear they could have turned their guns on Hillary had the election turned out differently. This book follows the tried and true MAD method. A lot of one page poster bits, (repositioning popular movies and such as Trump features). Lots of one page joke ideas, (for example, Trump quotes opposite quotes from the Bible). There aren't too many long form cartoons or parodies, which was fine by me because sometimes they can be pretty labored, (for example, a Zombie Apprentice line up featuring dead celebrities). Peppered throughout are one page checklists of Trump v. Clinton, or Trump v. The Pope, and so on, comparing their stats like two opposing fighters. They were especially clever. Lots of rewritten songs, (Christmas carols and the like), that had some witty rhymes and jokes. There's a great deal of photoshopping, which of course is new to people who grew up on 60's and 70's MAD. For example, I got a kick out of how all of the Republican contenders were dressed and posed for a fake J. Crew catalogue.It's hard to keep this sort of thing up for an entire book, (hair jokes, Trump University jokes, and so on), but they do their best with the material at hand. There aren't any deep cuts or penetrating takedowns. This is Jay Leno/Jimmy Fallon territory and the humor is PG-13. But that said, there were a few chuckles and grins, and some of the individual bits were very clever. All in all this was exactly what I would expect from a MAD style book, and I'd suggest that how you feel about MAD and its approach to topical humor will probably dictate, (along with your degree of loyalty or opposition to Trump), how much you enjoy this book.(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

** I read an advance reader copy of this book that I received from Edelweiss . **Loved, loved, loved this book!! Of course, this will offend many people but since that is the point of MAD Magazine, they really hit it out of the park with this issue! Particularly enjoyed the "No, Donald" segment, as it seems very appropriate given the behavior of the man it is parodying.

A decent collection of graphics, comics and commentary about the freaky bastard, but it doesn't raise many laughs, partly because over here in the UK most of the other people mentioned just haven't been heard of (Kellyanne Conway?? Chris Christie???), but mostly because it's such a facile, easy target. You want the likes of Private Eye completely tearing him a new one instead.